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<title>Loving Can Hurt Sometimes (Keep It in a Photograph) by sweeterthankarma</title>
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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24383920">Loving Can Hurt Sometimes (Keep It in a Photograph)</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/sweeterthankarma/pseuds/sweeterthankarma'>sweeterthankarma</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Bold Type</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Adena is still very much in love with Kat, Exes, F/F, S4E10: Some Kind of Wonderful, and we all know Kat is in love with her too, but Adena doesn't know it, past relationship</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-05-26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-05-26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 02:02:25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,132</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24383920</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/sweeterthankarma/pseuds/sweeterthankarma</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Adena’s finger presses down on the shutter release button, the camera flashing white-bright a second later.<br/>Kat doesn’t flinch, doesn’t look up from her phone. She doesn’t see Adena there capturing her. She never does. She never really did before, either.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Kat Edison/Adena El-Amin</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>43</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Loving Can Hurt Sometimes (Keep It in a Photograph)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Title comes from the song "Photograph" by Ed Sheeran.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Adena’s finger presses down on the shutter release button, the camera flashing white-bright a second later. It’s a familiar habit, something she doesn’t even have to really think about; she reacts instantly, angling the lens a bit and adjusting her grip to try for a better shot. Somehow, she knows instinctually, without even checking the photo reel, that it can be better. She hasn’t got the perfect picture, not yet.   </p><p>Kat doesn’t flinch, doesn’t look up from her phone. She doesn’t see Adena there capturing her. She never does. She never really did before, either.</p><p>(Before, when they were together. When they were in love. When Adena loved so hard, so urgently, with more fire than she ever had before, and yet everything still crumbled around her. Everything still faded away. Kat still left.) </p><p>Adena tries to not think about that. She’s been good lately at this whole “pretending to be just coworkers and maybe casual friends” thing, but not as good as Kat. She’s pretty sure Kat isn’t even pretending. </p><p>Adena takes another shot. Kat’s phone dings, lights up a little brighter than it had before, and Kat reacts, typing away quicker than anyone Adena’s ever seen. She fights back a frown and tries not to get melodramatic, she really does, but she can’t help the loud, heavy, relentlessly nagging thought in the back of her mind offering the prospect that maybe now, Kat just doesn’t care whether she’s Adena’s muse or not. </p><p>(Maybe she really doesn’t care if she’s anyone’s muse or not. Things would hurt less if Adena believed that and even less if it were true, but Adena knows all too well that Kat hasn’t been good on her promise, hasn’t spent the past few months alone recalibrating and getting to know herself like she said she would that teary night in her apartment. And maybe she’s just bitter, but it makes Adena curious, makes her wonder what else Kat has fallen through on, <em> who </em>else she’s fallen through on. But of course, she doesn’t want to think about Kat with other people, and that’s the whole problem.)</p><p>Kat finally looks up from her phone screen, says something about RJ and work and <em> not </em> the elephant in the room, the thing they’ve both gotten so good at pretending doesn’t bother them. Adena goes to bite her lip but stops in fear of smudging her lipstick, then nods along to whatever plan Kat has in place, already knowing that she’s right in whatever she wants to do. She always is. </p><p>(Maybe even in leaving, too.)</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>Later in the night, they dance. It’s a surprisingly easy thing, to be this close to Kat, and of course Adena knows this already, but now is different. Still mildly charged, but almost friendly. Not bad, because Kat is still in her life and Adena will take whatever dosage of her that she can get, but admittedly it’s not great either. Not even good. And it gets worse when Kat talks about love, just for a second, talks about them and what kept them together and Adena can feel her alluding to what they are now. She doesn’t like the simplicity of the statement, the ease of the way Kat talks about them in the past tense when Adena can hardly think about it. </p><p>Kat’s hand stays in Adena’s, firm and warm and intertwined. Every time they move past each other in this dance— both literal and figurative— they get a little closer. Adena makes a mental note of it, thinks she could write a poignant poem about the way they move around one another if she ever gets the right words or the necessary courage. </p><p>This whole time, Kat talks about RJ. She’s restless, can’t even bask in the serenity of her best friend’s wedding for two minutes without thinking about work, and Adena gets it; her mind is half focused on coming up with the best way to summarize the hypocricies of a conversion therapy supporter funding an outwardly queer and feminist magazine, and also trying not to look at Kat. To <em> really </em>look at her— her lips or her cheek or her throat or the plateau of skin below her collarbones that her perfectly tailored suit exposes, all the places Adena used to be able to kiss. It feels like a lifetime since she last did, and she doesn’t like that. Doesn’t like the way her throat burns with the lie she has to toss out when a somewhat intoxicated wedding guest slash stranger gives her a look and asks how she knows Kat, and she simply replies, “we met through work.” </p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>Later, before she sleeps, Adena looks at the photo reel. The shots are beautiful, breathtakingly so— snapshots of vanilla wedding cake topped with strawberries and curls of chocolate, golden glittering rings, Sutton and Richard hugging and kissing and smiling at each other in that way that just radiates love, makes Adena’s chest hurt in both a good and a bad way. (Good, because love always feels good whether its her own or not, but bad because it’s not, and just because she’s happy doesn’t mean she can’t be sad too. She wonders sometimes— far too often, actually— if her shot at love like that is gone, already passed and fading away in her memories with every new day. Maybe it was never even hers to begin with.) </p><p>Adena marvels at the photos, almost forgets that she’s the one that’s taken them. Sure, she knows she’s got skills and she markets herself at being especially good with angles and juxtaposition, but she always says that art is only as good as its subject. You can’t make an ugly scene beautiful; the beauty is always just hidden. Here, though, it’s obvious, especially when she comes to the photos of Kat.</p><p>She spends far too long than would be platonically appropriate looking at them, even saves a few to her camera roll on her phone after she’s uploaded them to her computer. Kat’s eyes are bright— when they actually meet the camera and tear away from her phone— and her expression is giddy, tender, pretty. She’s always so pretty. Dark ringlets of hair frame her face, adorned by white jewelry, and Adena takes the sight in, tries to memorize all of her even though she’s forever immortalized in film and digital pixels. Every detail, every little thing that Adena used to know so well, suddenly seems so far away and out of reach, even though she knows Kat is just a quick phone call and L train ride away. </p><p>Guilt bubbles in her gut the longer she stares, making her face the truth—<em> yeah, yeah, </em>she knows she’s not over her. Everyone in Manhattan might as well know it at this point. </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>You can find me on Tumblr under the same username, sweeterthankarma.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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